So, we have arrived safely in California. Made it from Vancouver to Sunnyvale in about 21 1/5 hours, including stops.

It rained from Vancouver right up until just before California. For the most part it was ok, no driving gales or anything. Made things a little interesting, I guess :)

We started off getting some munchies in Bellingham, since we couldn’t cross w/ fruits or veggies. Made it fairly far without a stop. Ianiv & I took turns driving, although overall his times driving were much longer than mine. At first, I was not remotely tired enough to nap, so I blogged. A lot. And we converted my laptop thereafter into our mp3 player… yeah, we have no ipod, can you believe it? We have a funny shot of the laptop I’ll share later.

So, the trip was great. I amused myself early on driving when I noticed I was following the same white truck for a long time. I think he had cruise control, so it was a nice check to my own speed – I wanted to be just a little over, but not under. So, after I noticed I was sticking to the truck, I decided to see how far I could play that out. Almost 2 hours, in fact! When he passed, I passed. But not always right away. I wanted to make it look casual ;) Anyway, it kept me amused.

It got dark early, around 5pm. Probably worse because of the cloud cover. So, we were driving in near complete darkness for 13 hours or so, probably missing some nice vistas here and there. OMG so boring. And for hours at a time, I wouldn’t see a car in front of me, nor one behind. That was the worst part. Absolutely nothing to look at. I cannot believe how few trucks were on the road too. I expected so many more.

Overall, it wasn’t the lack of sleep that did us in, it was the boredom of a completely empty highway going on and on – dark, so we didn’t see anything interesting. We started trading off more at this point, drinking power drinks, trying unsuccessfully to nap. We were good up until about 2 hours before San Francisco, where we had to pull off to get outside and wake up. Then we hit rush hour! Arg! It took us an extra hour to navigate around and into Sunnyvale.

Right when we got here I was totally not tired. We’re staying with friends, so luckily we can come and go as we please. Went out for lunch and that was about it – the food made us tired again so we came to nap. And that’s about it. It took me an hour to read my email and post all the stuff I’ve written, and now I’m ready for another nap ;)

We’ll head further south in a day or two to Universal Studios or something, then Disneyland starting on Thursday.

If you have a dog, seriously, walk it! Don’t push it around like a baby. And a cat!?! Why? I have indoor cats, and taking them out in this would a) give them a heart attack and b) tease them.

I see no point whatsoever to pushing any animal into a cage, when they should be on a leash walking around getting exercise. This is a sad reflection of our sedentary lifestyles. And a really pathetic waste of money. But I bet there are people pushing their pets around NY as we speak in these contraptions.

We’re in the last few hours before leaving Vancouver. We’ve yet to pack, but that will happen in a jiffy. We’re just doing a load of laundry and cleaning for the friend we have coming to housesit and take care of our cats.

I am starting to get very excited! Road trip! 18 hours is nothing next to the experience. So much fun.

We’ll keep you posted with pictures and news. And I will likely have some stuff to blog by the time we get to San Jose for the first stop. I have about 40 tabs open with stuff to work on while in the car. We have the adapter for our laptops ;)

We’re trying to prepare for this “non-work” period, which feels kinda weird. And I am not sure how we’ll react to it. First off, we are getting one of those outlet thingies for the car so we can power our laptops from the lighter. So, we can “technically” do some work while driving to California and back, but without wireless of course.

So, we’re not completely away from the temptations of work, and yes there are many, so I wonder how well we’ll do?

How am I supposed to travel without my email?

How will I cope with the email when I open it?

What if I get an awesome link and I’m not there?

How the heck am I supposed to manage 16 blogs when I am away??

How do you manage to write 8 days worth of posts in 3 days (I am advance posting for some blogs)?

How do I stop the urge to work at midnight when we get back from Disneyland?

Oh, the temptations will be there. I’ll want to check my email. And my stats. And my earnings. And work. Yeah, I love working. Not such a bad thing. But I think after a couple of days I’ll be able to put away some of the nagging work signals and just have fun. So long as I can get all this advance posting done. I think I’ve written 40 or so posts tonight. On a roll.